1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imprinting apparatus and method and, more particularly, to an imprinting apparatus and method for forming a residual film including a uniform thickness all over a substrate.
2. Description of the Related Art
Display devices such as liquid crystal displays (“LCDs”) and organic light emitting displays (“OLEDs”) realize display performance with excellent image quality and operating speed by individually controlling pixels arranged in a matrix form. For example, the LCD controls the light transmittance of liquid crystal cells, arranged in the matrix form, in accordance with input image signal information, and therefore, displays a desired image. These display devices are flat panel display devices which are thin in thickness, light in weight and low in power consumption and driving voltage and thereby widely applied to various types of electronic devices.
These display devices mainly use a thin film transistor (“TFT”) as a switching element. In the TFT manufacturing process, a photolithography method is performed several times to form a fine pattern. The photolithography method includes a film forming operation, a photoresist forming operation, a mask making operation, an exposing operation, a developing operation, an etching operation and a photoresist removing operation. Accordingly, the photolithography method requires a lot of manufacturing costs and time and the method itself is very complicated.
Therefore, various methods for forming a fine pattern on a substrate without employing the photolithography process have been proposed, for example, a nano-imprinting method.
In an imprinting method, a residual film is generated on a substrate after forming a pattern in terms of process characteristics. The residual film is removed by an etching operation to perform subsequent operations. In this case, when the thickness of the residual film on the substrate is not uniform, a portion of residual film remains on the substrate even after performing a residual film removal operation, and acts as an obstacle for the subsequent operations and further acts as a factor which deteriorates the display quality after the completion of the manufacturing process.
Accordingly, it is necessary to provide a method of forming a uniform residual film all over the substrate during the imprinting operation.